Cheers To You
by SailAway
Summary: SPOILERS! My version of how things went after Lockdown, and also a lot of spoilers for the season premiere.


Author's Note: Unfortunately, I own nothing. Also, there are some MAJOR spoilers in this about the season premiere. The spoilers may be inaccurate, but if you don't want to be spoiled, I wouldn't advise reading this! Also, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. I don't know anything about medical terms except for the very basic stethoscope, and, of course, what I have learned from my several years as a loyal ER viewer.

  
  


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PREVIOUSLY on ER: A smallpox outbreak in the ER causes one little girl to die. Jing-Mei and Pratt both show signs of having contracted the disease. Carter and Abby share a kiss. 

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"She shouldn't be moved yet! She's not stable!" Luka yelled in his thick foreign accent at Doctor Romano.

Romano glared at the younger man. "We can't do anything more for her in this hospital. She needs to go to the burn hospital immediately. Her pulse-ox is normal, and there is nothing that leads me to believe that she can't be moved yet. In fact, she should have been transported hours ago, if only the doctors in the ER had been quicker with their evaluations! Because of that several hour lag, she will probably have to have skin graphs on most of her body!" The two men, along with Susan Lewis, hurried across the roof of the hospital to where a helicopter was waiting for their patient, a young woman who had been in a chemical fire. 

"She's unconscious, and her pulse has fluctuated several times in the last hour!" 

Romano turned to Luka as they ran. He was exasperated. These young doctors always thought they knew everything, even when they understand nothing. Still scowling at Luka, Doctor Romano didn't look up where he was going. He only turned to look at what was in front of him as he felt something like fire touching his arm and engulfing his entire body. He crumpled to the ground, his lower arm flung away, sliced cleanly from his body just above his elbow. Blood rained down on Luka and Susan, their eyes wide, Susan screaming. The helicopter's rear blades slowly stopped spinning, and the pilot hopped out, cursing loudly. When he saw what had caused the disuse of the blades, he took a quick step backwards, gritted his teeth, and ran over to the doctors.

  
  


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"You started it!"

"I did not! It was you! You kissed me first." 

"Oh, come on. You were the one who had to look sexy in the middle of a potential epidemic!" John Carter and Abby Lockhart argued loudly over who had started the lip-lock session they had shared a few weeks ago. It had lead to a full blown romance, and Abby was now sporting a silver ring with a gigantic diamond set in the center. 

John was certain that it was Abby who had started the kiss that day, but the events were very cloudy in his mind. These past few weeks, the only thing on his mind has been, Abby! Abby! Abby! Her beauty, her eloquence, her sense of humor. Everything about her, he loved so much that it hurt. He would be content to spend the rest of his life merely sitting on a couch and watching her every move on a television, just as long as he could always see her on the screen, smiling out at him. He had, in fact, loved her for far longer than just since the day in May when they had made out in the midst of a small-pox outbreak. He had loved her since he met her, which felt like an eon ago and like yesterday, both at the same time.

  
  


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Doctor Jing-Mei Chen stared at herself in the mirror as she brushed her jet black hair. A few pock-marks were still visible on her neck, but she was mostly back to her old self. The only thing different from before she had contracted small-pox was now she was deathly afraid of hospitals, which proved to be quite a problem since she works in one. 

She was set to return to work that day, but she didn't feel as if she could go back to the place where she had almost lost her life, along with a little girl who had actually succumbed to the disease. Her parents had told her that a month was long enough to recover, and that it was time for her to return to work. She disagreed. No amount of time would ever be enough to forget the awful scenes.

Just weeks before, sitting in a small hospital room with a colleague and a singing, drunk man. Looking through the windows as doctors and patients rushed around, and several more people showing signs of having contracted the disease, themselves. After all was said and done, there was only one fatality, but six people had come done with small-pox, scarring their bodies and frying a young girls brain from an excessively high temperature. True, there could have been much more deaths, but the single one was enough to chill Jing-Mei to the bottom of her soul.

  
  


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"Can you save his arm?" Susan asked Elizabeth Corday. Susan had changed out of her blood splattered clothes and was now decked out in an outfit of sea green scrubs. Dark circles had appeared under her eyes, and her hair was in a messy ponytail hastily affixed to the back of her head. Her eye makeup had smeared to thready black lines. 

Elizabeth shook her head. She had reattached quite a few body parts in her days, but Romano's arm looked very bad. There were slashes and gashes, but where it was severed was at least a fairly clean cut. She hoped she could save the arm and get it to be workable. She couldn't imagine a Robert Romano without a left arm. She nodded grimly at Susan and walked into the O.R. Susan returned to the waiting room, where Kerry was sitting in a plastic chair. She stood up when Susan entered, and reached out. Susan let Kerry embrace her, and tears flowed freely from her eyes.

"I was. . .right there." She said, taking huge gulps of air between words. "I could have. . .stopped it!" She pulled away, wiping a hand across her eyes. "I should have noticed that he was walking right toward the blades."

Kerry sympathetically rubbed circles on Susan's back. "It was not your fault, honey. It was an accident. Robert is strong. He'll pull through." 

Susan shook her head ferociously. "His arm was cut off. Completely cut off. I don't think he'll ever be able to perform surgery again, even if Elizabeth can reattach it." Susan sat down heavily in a chair. "I don't think I have ever seen anything as gruesome as that. I've never seen someone I know have something so drastic happen. Oh, God." Leaning her head again the wall, she stared up at the ceiling, praying for the surgeon who was now the one under the knife. Life seemed so bizarre. Who would have ever thought that a freak accident would occur to the high and mighty Robert Romano? And yet, now he was hurt, more that anyone else that she had ever known. She glanced at Kerry. Kerry was sitting down again, her head cradled in her hands, staring blankly at the floor. Susan immediately felt bad. Kerry had been on much closer terms with Romano. 

While Kerry had certainly never been friends with Romano, she had known him for years, and held deep respect for the man. While she had occasionally felt loathing for him, she knew that deep down, he was actually a pretty good guy. He had always had a dry sense of humor that most people never actually understood. He was a very blunt fellow. He was an outstanding surgeon.

With a start, Kerry realized that she had been thinking about Robert in the past tense. She quickly corrected herself. Robert IS an outstanding surgeon.

She folded her hands in a movement she hadn't done since she was a child, and began to pray.

  
  


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That's all for now, folks. I'll get to work on the next chapter tomorrow. 


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